Where do good technology sales leads come from? Are technology leads always just out there waiting for you to find them? Are these sales leads lying dormant within a company waiting for some sales rep to come along and harvest them?

Or are technology leads created when the forces of business change come together and create new needs, like when a company expands or moves their offices or launches a new product?

The answer to all of these questions is “Yes,” but there are major differences in the internal chemistry of these two different types of technology leads and it’s important to recognize the differences when you are conducting your lead generation work.

Both types of IT sales leads can exist and co-exist within a company at the same time.  Leads that “always exist” within a company are considered “dormant” opportunities that are there because every organization has problems, issues and challenges. There are always better, more efficient ways to accomplish something. To uncover “dormant” sales leads, you need to show your prospects that you can help them tackle an ongoing challenge.

Uncovering “dormant” sales leads by stimulating interest:

Sales leads that are lying dormant require you to create demand and stimulate interest for your solution. For example, your services can eliminate redundancy by streamlining a customer’s production process from 37 steps to 12 steps while maintaining or improving quality.

This sounds like a great solution but chances are you don’t have prospects calling you all day for a demo. Why? Because the pain that you are solving is lying dormant with in  the context of how your prospect is currently doing business.

Chances are your prospect is reasonably happy using a process that the company has been successful with for many years, and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Thus the sales drivers in this lead are going to have to be created and stimulated by your efforts.

To get dormant sales leads you need to show the prospect what is broken, and how your solution can fix it better than the alternatives.

Dormant sales leads are not going to come to you. Instead, you will need to be the engine behind this type of technology lead generation.

• Advantages of dormant sales leads: The biggest benefit of working with dormant sales leads is that you were the one who uncovered the lead and brought it out of dormancy, so you are probably the only vendor talking to the prospect. Instead of trying to drown out the noise of other competitors, you can focus on educating your prospects, building relationships with them and getting them to buy into what you’re selling.

• Disadvantages of dormant sales leads: Dormant sales leads give you the challenge of a longer sales cycle because your solution was not already on the drawing board. Since the prospect was not already considering a solution like yours (or perhaps had not even realized that there was a solution on the  market), you will need to patiently work with them to make the case for ROI and sell them on what your solution will save the company so they can find the money to buy it.

Sales Leads resulting from internal changes:

Technology sales leads are also created as a result of internal changes at a company. Every time a company changes its core functions, launches new products, moves its location or expands its operations, there are new opportunities created for B2B sales leads. These sales leads that result from internal change are often referred to as “low hanging fruit.”

Why? Because low hanging fruit is easy to recognize, ripe and ready for the plucking. Internal change sales leads tend to offer short sales cycles and highly motivated buyers.

• Advantages of “internal change” sales leads: The prospect is almost always ready to buy, they know what they want, and the sales cycle is short because the prospect needs to bring new systems and solutions online as part of its internal ramp-up in business operations.

• Disadvantages of “internal change” sales leads: You might find yourself in a “cattle call” where you’re trying to sell to the prospect along with 10 other vendors. This can lead to difficulty in building relationships with the prospect, since you’re competing in a noisy din of vendors all screaming they have a better mouse trap. These sales leads might also present you with lower margins because the prospect is playing vendors off of each other and looking for the lowest possible cost. If a prospect sees you as just part of a “cattle call” of undistinguishable vendors, you lose differentiation and risk having the sale turn into a commodity purchase based on price alone. When companies are making a big push to bring new systems or solutions on board, they tend to evaluate many different solutions at once, meaning that the prospect gives you no “one on one” time because of the volume of vendors and you have to submit your proposal without an opportunity to drive home your key selling points.

Which type of technology sales leads are most profitable for you to pursue?

Most sales organizations build their new business development and lead generation programs on searching for low-hanging fruit. These business leads require less skill to develop, but unfortunately there are fewer of them. After all, if all IT leads were a matter of picking the low-hanging fruit, we’d all be a lot wealthier!

To develop these low-hanging fruit sales leads, reps must move through a high volume of prospects and “skim” these leads from the top of the prospecting funnel. There is more luck than skill involved here and few reps can sustain the rigors of this type of prospecting day in and day out.

On the other hand, creating IT sales leads from dormant pain issues is an advanced sales prospecting technique and requires skills, strategy and finesse. It’s a process rather than a simple phone call to create these types of business leads. Finding the more lucrative (but time-consuming) dormant sales leads requires a more experienced lead generation expert with a more nuanced understanding of the industry and the client’s business.

It is critical that your team generate these dormant sales leads as part of the foundation of your lead generation program, because low-hanging fruit leads are not predictable, reliable and cannot be generated consistently.  For example, in the Great Recession we are working our way out of now, low-hanging fruit business leads have all but disappeared as companies have locked down their spending.

Technology lead generation is never truly easy, and the biggest rewards go to the companies that know how to put in extra effort to uncover the most lucrative business leads. Don’t let your company starve while you wait for low-hanging fruit to head your way. Instead, put in the time and resources to finding the sales leads that are out there, but haven’t realized that they need to hear from you yet.

Looking for a technology lead generation company to help manage your sales leads? Talk to Strategic Sales & Marketing for comprehensive lead management services to help you through the IT lead generation process. Our industry-leading technology sales consultants and appointment setters know how to cultivate, qualify and close on complex B2B sales leads in a variety of technology industries. We can help you find more sales leads, better qualify your sales leads, conduct more efficient appointment setting, and improve conversion rates to overcome your IT lead generation challenges and turn B2B sales leads into bigger sales results.

Contact Strategic Sales & Marketing for a free quick quote or a free, no obligation Test Drive of our lead generation services.

The much-maligned “80-20 rule” seems to be an inescapable fact of the sales world. Many sales teams have high performers who bring in the majority of the business, while other sales reps struggle to keep up.

Although most sales managers feel like they have to learn to accept the 80-20 rule, the fact is that if 20% of your sales team is writing almost all of your business, then the rest of your team has two big issues: they are not good “deal closers” and they also not good “lead nurturers.”

Some sales people are good at closing or at nurturing leads, but if your sales people are simultaneously struggling with both issues, that is what creates the cavernous 80-20 performance divide on sales teams everywhere.

So why are these two issues so difficult to connect and correct? Are you training your reps on how to advance deals as well as close them?

To understand these issues in greater detail, let’s look at the differences between the 20 percenters (high performers) and the 80 percenters (low performers):

80 percenters (low performing sales people) tend to have the following traits:

• Low success rates in advancing sales leads beyond the first call. Low performers tend to lose prospects before they even have a chance to develop a rapport or identify the prospect’s possible points of pain. Thus the pipeline of deals never reaches critical mass to reach sales goals.
• Lack of customization of early sales discussions and presentations: Low performers tend to take a one-size-fits-all approach to their prospecting, appointment setting and follow-up calls. This leads to a loss of good sales prospects, as the buyers get the feeling that the sales person isn’t concerned with their unique needs.
• Poor relationship building: Low performers tend to do too much talking and not enough listening on every sales call, often resulting in early termination of the sales call by the prospect.
• Narrow opportunity vision: If the prospect isn’t interested in the immediate sales proposition, then low performing sales people tend to be ineffective at asking follow-up questions and probing for other opportunities.
• Unable to dig deep in to product knowledge to discuss solutions on the “fly:” Low performing sales people tend to operate with a “calling script” mentality, and tend to have limited/shallow knowledge of the product. As a result, they miss opportunities to respond to customer questions and follow up with probing questions, thus limiting sales lead advancement.
• Not selling with solutions: Low performing sales people tend to operate from a “check the box” mentality where if the customer isn’t asking for exactly what they’re selling, they don’t know how to respond. High performers know how to take a broader solution-based selling approach that shows the prospect, “I care about your problem and I can solve it for you.”

20 percenters (high performing sales people) tend to offer the following traits:

• 20 percenters are not only great closers, but they are also great lead generators and pipeline managers. They have prospecting systems and processes in place that consistently keep their pipelines healthy.  They typically have all or some of these systems in place on an on going basis
  • Referral development
  • Cross sell & upsell
  • E-mail marketing
  • LinkedIn Presence
  • Electronic Come Up Systems
  • 20 percenters are sequential marketers. Great sales people know how to keep cycling a prospect through the various options available, depending on the prospect’s changing needs and shifting interests. If a prospect has an initial interest in product X and ultimately says they’re not interested, then the high performing sales person knows how to naturally and organically offer up product Y as a new option to keep the sale advancing.
  • 20 percenters operate with “on board” internal sales diagnostics. They critique and fine-tune their sales process on the fly. They reinvent and adjust their competitive strategies based on real time “on the street” business intelligence data. 20 percenters are constantly learning and adapting based on the feedback (direct and implied) that they get from customers.

How can sales managers help more of their 80 percenters to act more like 20 percenters and drive more business through the sales cycle?

1)     Work closely with reps on shut down or early termination of sales leads that are preventing healthy pipelines from growing. The best way to move the needle on your sales goals is to expand the pool of leads – and that means improving your early appointment setting and follow-up calls.

2)     Develop specific procedures for following up on sales leads. No winging it. Learn from the best sales people on your team and try to replicate their successes. The best sales follow-up doesn’t happen by accident; instead it’s an ongoing process that can be repeated and learned by others.

3)     Develop comebacks for the top 10 most common objections heard on follow up calls. Train and test your reps in real time on their responses. Chances are your sales people are all hearing the same objections. Success lies in coaching your sales team to respond with greater consistency. Learn the shortcuts that your successful sales people have mastered, and share them with the rest of the team.

4)     If sales leads respond as “not interested,” train sales reps to upsell and cross sell into other services and to make these attempts while on the initial follow up call. You might find that many of your “not interested” prospects will be interested in other offerings – but you need to start the conversation.

5)     Monitor your reps while they are following up on leads to make sure they are implementing your follow up processes and procedures. Reps who have low hit rates on sales lead follow-up and closing typically complain that their problem is poor quality leads.  Be skeptical and test your lead sources for yourself. And make sure that all of your reps are using consistent, focused processes for follow-up and lead nurturing.

The 80-20 rule doesn’t have to be a limitation on your sales team’s performance. Instead, by emulating and replicating the best tactics and processes of your 20 percenters, you can help all of your 80 percenters improve their performance and drive bigger results for your company.

Click here to read: Part 1: 80/20 Sales Rule: Searching For A Cure

Strategic Sales & Marketing (SSM) is a B2B lead generation and appointment setting firm that helps companies develop smarter strategies for sales appointment setting, sales lead qualification and lead management. Our team of experienced appointment setters and sales consultants have helped make over 50 million sales calls during the past 22 years.

The 80-20 rule, also known as Pareto’s Principle, was named after Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), an Italian economist who observed that for certain economic conditions, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. For example, during Pareto’s time, he observed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, and 80% of the peas in his garden came from 20% of the pea pods.

The 80-20 rule has become a widely accepted rule of thumb in business. Many sales organizations have likely noticed that 80% of their sales come from 20% of their sales people. Even in successful, highly competitive organizations, high performers find a way to stand out beyond the crowd.

Today’s sales organizations need to take a new look at the 80-20 rule to see how to drive more value with less expenditure and effort. If 80% of your sales are coming from just 20% of your sales efforts, you need to find a way to maximize your investment of time and resources on the vital 20%, and less time and resources on the less effective 80% of your efforts.

There are a few ways that the 80-20 rule might be appearing in your sales organization:

• 80-20 sales performers: Many sales managers complain about 80-20 performance on their sales teams, where approximately 80 percent of sales are produced by approximately 20 percent of salespeople. The challenge: constantly reward your high performers, train and support your lower performers, and maintain high standards of hiring so that you’re constantly bringing in new blood on the sales team that can perform at a higher level than the people they replaced.

• 80-20 back end: If you look at the back end of your sales process, where sales proposals and closing ratios are tracked, you will often see low closing ratios – for example, 80% of revenues coming from 20% of proposals. The challenge here is, how can we identify which proposals are more likely to be effective?

80-20 performance and 80-20 closing ratios are the “usual suspects” of the 80-20 rule for sales, but from my experience of over 30 years as a former sales rep, B2B sales manager and owner of a lead generation firm, the true impact of the 80-20 rule goes far beyond closing ratios.

80-20 rule for sales: Look at the front end

I have seen this issue from many angles over the past 30 years. What I have learned is that if you want to understand the true impact of the 80-20 rule on your revenues, you have to look not only at closing ratios (the back end of your sales process) but also at the management of the sales lead follow up process  (the front end of your sales process).

Why? If you are just looking at closing percentages and calculating how many deals your reps are closing, you are looking at a small sample size: those few proposals that have already made their way deep into your sales process. By this measure you are not capturing all the potential deals that never made it beyond the first or second call and failed to advance to the proposal stage of your sales cycle.

By all means, track the closing ratios of your individual sales reps. This is a good way to figure out who your top closers are, and who needs additional training or support.

But if you want to break out of the 80-20 rule trap, more significant than the proposals not closing is taking a look at the larger number of deals that are not advancing beyond your first sales “touch” at the early sales lead follow-up stage.

It’s here in the front end that the most significant amount of revenue potential is lost as there are typically many more deals failing then advancing. If you can find a way to boost the number of deals that go beyond an initial cold call, you’re likely to increase the number of deals that you close.

Getting past the 80-20 rule is about more than improving your team’s skill in closing deals. You also need to get better at nurturing sales leads along the way, so you can draw from a bigger pool of qualified leads and improve your conversion ratios at every step of the sales process.

Click here to read: Part 2: 80/20 Sales Rule: Implementing a Cure

Strategic Sales & Marketing (SSM) is a B2B lead generation and appointment setting firm that helps companies develop smarter strategies for sales appointment setting, sales lead qualification and lead management. Our team of experienced appointment setters and sales consultants have helped make over 50 million sales calls during the past 22 years.

Internet has become one of the most essential tools to be used in modern day business set up.  Given the numerous benefits that the medium has on offer, various organizations and business owners are realizing that there is no way one could stay away from the internet.  The same is the case with lead generation services too.  Among the many sources of lead generation, which are available, internet is the most successful in the recent years.  Business owners also reap benefits of not requiring a physical presence for the same.  You could be anywhere and your internet lead generation system will work for you, without a rest, 24 by 7.  Here are some tips for you to get started with internet based campaign for lead generation.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE: This is especially important when you are dealing with external lead generation companies.  You have to inform the lead generation company about your audience.  Who is your audience is not defined by its age or just some other demographic factors.  You have to mention a lot else about it starting from its interests and hobbies to the way it spends its time.  Some lead generation companies also conduct extensive research, by themselves, before starting the campaign.  This is important to ensure that the right destinations, on the internet, are being targeted for the various lead generation activities.

SET UP THE PROCESS:  In case, your work is being handled by an external provider of lead generation services, this step would be handled by it.  The process basically is set up to find out what one does with the lead.  Most people tend to generate leads and then find it difficult to find out as to what exactly has to be done with it.  Once the process has been set up of how a lead is being processed till the time it is converted, it will really help companies in using them more effectively.

HAVE THE WEBSITE: There are two ways to go about it here.  You can either direct all the traffic to your home page or set up a separate landing page for the people who are reflecting interest in your services.  In either case, you have to ensure that you have proper mechanism to capture the information that the lead is ready to divulge.  The more the information, the better would it be for you.

KEEP A CHECK: Finally, it is important that you are in total control.  You should keep a check of what has been happening with your lead generation efforts.  This is possible on the internet by accessing the statistics.  You can have the statistics on your own website or check it through some other affiliate website.

Outsourcing of one’s appointment setting requirements to external appointment setting companies is not an uncommon phenomenon today.  An increasing number of firms are realizing that escalated competition, consumer expectations, employee attrition and all those business issues are more pressing and that is hampering their ardour towards appointment setting.  Hence, it becomes more logical to outsource the work to a company which is dedicatedly involved in the process and can hence generate better results.  Here are a few other compelling reasons to hire appointment setting services from professional companies rather than getting it done in house:

KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRENDS: Trends in the market change continuously and that has especially been the case in the last couple of years.  Change is the only constant as they say and it applies quite seamlessly to the market structure.  Technologies change and so do perceptions and one has to hence adapt to those changes.  However, these changes would be known to only that individual / group which is incessantly in touch with the industry.  The same is the case with appointment setting too.  There are various new techniques which have ushered into the system and professional appointment setting companies know best about how to put them to use.  If you set up an in house department for the same, it might take you some time and money to be able to gauge all these advancements and changes in the industry.

UNDERSTANDING THE AUDIENCE:Professional appointment setters work on different projects which all have different target group. Hence, they understand the sense of the market and adapt themselves accordingly.  Therefore, they end up being better at the job than those firms which are venturing into it as a supplementary activity to support their main business.

EFFICIENCY: Again, appointment setters do this job day in and day out.  This makes them more efficient and can, thus, set more appointments than the employees that you might hire in house.

ONE POINT OF CONTACT: This is one of the most attractive features of hiring external appointment setting services.  When you build an in house team, you have to deal with the many employees who are a part of the team.  You have to manage leave requests, lack of performance, attrition, appraisals and much more.  However, you are relieved of all of that when you work with a professional company.  You are only in touch with one person who is handling your project and the rest is handled by the company.

Hence, one can realize that outsourcing of one’s work of setting appointments comes loaded with many benefits which one can explore.

Lead generation has never been a simple task.  People, over the years, have realized it, the hard way, that an increasing competition in the industry has meant an increasingly saturated prospect.  It is because of this reason that telephone marketing, bulk emails and even text messages are being termed as intrusive or undesired by many people.  This has coerced marketers and lead generation companies to think beyond telemarketing lead generation and develop innovative ideas to break the jinx.

Press releases are the most sought after ideas of the modern day marketers and providers of lead generation services.  There is an educated understanding of the prospects today which makes one believe that press releases could be a handsome tool in the hands of the people.  With an escalated competitive activity, prospects are becoming averse to marketing messages which talk ruthlessly about the promoting brands.  They are only ready to believe information which is coming from a trusted source, a source which is considered to be genuine, transparent, unbiased and honest.  News papers, blogs and online news websites fit into this perception quite seamlessly.  People consume news without doubting the intentions of the article writer.  It is here where press releases can fit in as a source of unparalleled and unprecedented fame for the company.

While it is established that press releases are a compelling tool for B2B lead generation, what one has to also realize is that the job, after all, is not all that simple.  Journalists are always on the lookout for stories but they are not willing to take up something which might not interest their audiences.  In other words, you have to build such interesting stories, around your brand, which might be compelling for the journalists and finally the news readers.  Here are some ideas which can help you achieve the objective.

Charity events are one of the most sought after ways of attracting instant media interest.  That also lends a philanthropic touch to the company and its work.  One can, in fact, take such charity events as an indirect tool of indulging into telemarketing lead generation alongside.  People might be contacted in the name of the event and a subtle message about the brand can be passed on alongside.  Hence, not only is the event being promoted but the organization’s societal message is coming out subtly too.

Over and above this, technological advancements, innovative management activities, lectures in prominent colleges and grand functions are some other ways of generating media attention and hence boosting one’s B2B lead generation efforts.  Through this, the lead generation companies can ensure that their lead generation services are generating the desired results.

Where do good B2B sales leads come from? Are business leads always just out there waiting for you to find them? Are sales leads lying dormant within a company waiting for some sales rep to come along and harvest them?

Or are sales leads created when the forces of business change come together and create new needs, like when a company expands or moves their offices or launches a new product?

The answer to all of these questions is “Yes,” but there are major differences in the internal chemistry of these two different types of sales leads and it’s important to recognize the differences when you are conducting B2B lead generation work.

Both types of B2B sales leads can exist and co-exist within a company at the same time.  Business leads that “always exist” within a company are considered “dormant” opportunities that are there because every organization has problems, issues and challenges. There are always better, more efficient ways to accomplish something. To uncover “dormant” sales leads, you need to show your prospects that you can help them tackle an ongoing challenge.

Uncovering “dormant” sales leads by stimulating interest:

Sales leads that are lying dormant require you to create demand and stimulate interest for your solution. For example, your services can eliminate redundancy by streamlining a customer’s production process from 37 steps to 12 steps while maintaining or improving quality.

This sounds like a great solution but chances are you don’t have prospects calling you all day for a demo. Why? Because the pain that you are solving is lying dormant with in  the context of how your prospect is currently doing business.

Chances are your prospect is reasonably happy using a process that the company has been successful with for many years, and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Thus the sales drivers in this lead are going to have to be created and stimulated by your efforts.

To get dormant sales leads you need to show the prospect what is broken, and how your solution can fix it better than the alternatives.

Dormant sales leads are not going to come to you. Instead, you will need to be the engine behind this type of lead generation.

• Advantages of dormant sales leads: The biggest benefit of working with dormant sales leads is that you were the one who uncovered the lead and brought it out of dormancy, so you are probably the only vendor talking to the prospect. Instead of trying to drown out the noise of other competitors, you can focus on educating your prospects, building relationships with them and getting them to buy into what you’re selling.

• Disadvantages of dormant sales leads: Dormant sales leads give you the challenge of a longer sales cycle because your solution was not already on the drawing board. Since the prospect was not already considering a solution like yours (or perhaps had not even realized that there was a solution on the  market), you will need to patiently work with them to make the case for ROI and sell them on what your solution will save the company so they can find the money to buy it.

Sales Leads resulting from internal changes:

B2B sales leads are also created as a result of internal changes at a company. Every time a company changes its core functions, launches new products, moves its location or expands its operations, there are new opportunities created for B2B sales leads. These sales leads that result from internal change are often referred to as “low hanging fruit.”

Why? Because low hanging fruit is easy to recognize, ripe and ready for the plucking. Internal change sales leads tend to offer short sales cycles and highly motivated buyers.

• Advantages of “internal change” sales leads: The prospect is almost always ready to buy, they know what they want, and the sales cycle is short because the prospect needs to bring new systems and solutions online as part of its internal ramp-up in business operations.

• Disadvantages of “internal change” sales leads: You might find yourself in a “cattle call” where you’re trying to sell to the prospect along with 10 other vendors. This can lead to difficulty in building relationships with the prospect, since you’re competing in a noisy din of vendors all screaming they have a better mouse trap. These sales leads might also present you with lower margins because the prospect is playing vendors off of each other and looking for the lowest possible cost. If a prospect sees you as just part of a “cattle call” of undistinguishable vendors, you lose differentiation and risk having the sale turn into a commodity purchase based on price alone. When companies are making a big push to bring new systems or solutions on board, they tend to evaluate many different solutions at once, meaning that the prospect gives you no “one on one” time because of the volume of vendors and you have to submit your proposal without an opportunity to drive home your key selling points.

Which type of B2B sales leads are most profitable for you to pursue?

Most sales organizations build their new business development and lead generation programs on searching for low-hanging fruit. These business leads require less skill to develop, but unfortunately there are fewer of them. After all, if all B2B lead generation were a matter of picking the low-hanging fruit, we’d all be a lot wealthier!

To develop these low-hanging fruit sales leads, reps must move through a high volume of prospects and “skim” these leads from the top of the prospecting funnel. There is more luck than skill involved here and few reps can sustain the rigors of this type of prospecting day in and day out.

On the other hand, creating B2B sales leads from dormant pain issues is an advanced sales prospecting technique and requires skills, strategy and finesse. It’s a process rather than a simple phone call to create these types of business leads. Finding the more lucrative (but time-consuming) dormant sales leads requires a more experienced lead generation expert with a more nuanced understanding of the industry and the client’s business.

It is critical that your team generate these dormant sales leads as part of the foundation of your lead generation program, because low-hanging fruit leads are not predictable, reliable and cannot be generated consistently.  For example, in the Great Recession we are working our way out of now, low-hanging fruit business leads have all but disappeared as companies have locked down their spending.

B2B lead generation is never truly easy, and the biggest rewards go to the companies that know how to put in extra effort to uncover the most lucrative business leads. Don’t let your company starve while you wait for low-hanging fruit to head your way. Instead, put in the time and resources to finding the sales leads that are out there, but haven’t realized that they need to hear from you yet.

Looking for lead generation companies to help manage your sales leads? Talk to Strategic Sales & Marketing for comprehensive lead management services to help you through the B2B lead generation process. Our industry-leading B2B sales consultants and appointment setters know how to cultivate, qualify and close on complex B2B sales leads in a variety of industries. We can help you find more sales leads, better qualify your sales leads, conduct more efficient appointment setting, and improve conversion rates to overcome your B2B lead generation challenges and turn B2B sales leads into bigger sales results.

Contact Strategic Sales & Marketing for a free quick quote or a free, no obligation Test Drive of our lead generation services.

Lots of lead generation companies claim to have special expertise in helping companies get bigger sales results from their B2B sales leads and lead generation efforts. Although there are a lot of different lead generation services that could potentially help your company’s sales results, sometimes the simple things make the biggest difference.

One way to get better results from your appointment setting calls is to simply re-think your method of closing the call. Are you ready to “Make the Ask” from your appointment setting calls? Here are 5 ways to get it done – clearly, concisely, and not “too clever by half.”

5 easy ways to re-think and rejuvenate your appointment setting closers:

1. Be logical: Don’t just ask for the appointment without offering sound logic as to why you and the decision maker should meet. You don’t want meetings just for the sake of meeting, and neither does your prospect. If you want to take up an hour of the prospect’s time, there needs to be a compelling reason (for the prospect) to do so. If you say, “I would like to set up a meeting so you can learn more about us,” there is not much of a reason there for the prospect to feel excited. Instead, it’s better to zero in on a problem that you can solve for the client. The logic here is clear: if the prospect takes the time to meet with you he may get the solution to a big problem. Always remember that it needs to make sense to the client in order to get that appointment – not only to you.

2. Be generous: On every appointment setting call, you need to put a carrot in front of your prospect. Give them some incentive to keep talking with you and to trust you. Your carrot should be in the form of valuable information. Offer to run a free report, review a document for them, research their issue, or get an expert opinion from someone in your network on a problem that the client is facing.

3. Do your homework – Have the solution ready: If you are following step one (from above), developing “logic” means also doing your homework. The more you know about the prospect’s business before you start the appointment setting process, the better your chances of getting the appointment. If you are seen as a solutions provider (and not just a “sales person”) prospects will naturally want to meet with you.

4. Be flexible: If the prospect wants to do a phone call instead of an on-site meeting, go with the flow. If the prospect wants to meet with you in 30 days instead of this week, book the appointment. If the prospect wants you to talk with one of his managers first, take the meeting and go with the flow. Recognize that you are at the entry point in a sale. Take the meeting and kick the door open, and then you can move on to the next steps.

5. Don’t Close the Door: If you ask for the appointment and you get a “no”… don’t close the door. Instead offer to follow up via e-mail with key information that the prospect needs (plan in advance for this possibility). Then make a second attempt to schedule the appointment by using the information you sent in order to re-open the conversation. Many second chance appointments don’t happen because you didn’t put yourself in position to re-open the discussion.

When you’re trying to choose between lead management companies, try to find a firm that is focused on more than just “the sale” itself. The best lead generation companies take a comprehensive approach to lead generation services, and can help with every step of the lead generation process, from finding new B2B sales leads, to qualifying business leads, to appointment setting. Sometimes you’ll find that adjusting your appointment setting closers can be an important step to closing more deals.

Are you looking for appointment setting companies for new ideas and new energy for your B2B lead generation process? Contact Strategic Sales & Marketing, a “leading light” among lead generation companies. Our team of B2B sales consultants and appointment setters offer comprehensive lead generation services to help clients overcome their B2B lead generation challenges with more efficient appointment setting, better qualified B2B sales leads and bigger sales results. Contact Strategic Sales & Marketing for a free quick quote or a free, no obligation Test Drive of our lead generation services.

B2B lead generation is all about dealing with objections, clarifying expectations and overcoming initial resistance or confusion about what you are offering to the prospect. Every cold call is an opportunity to learn more about a prospect’s business, build relationships and earn their trust. Even the standard “problems” of cold calling can be used as an opportunity to get closer to a sale.

There are many ways to use an initial conversation on B2B lead generation cold calls, even if the person is completely unhelpful, to get what you need from the call and help the prospect’s business as well.

Here are 3 unhelpful people you meet on cold calls, and how to help them help you!

Mr. “I Am Not the Right Person”
We’ve all been there – you get a phone number for a prospect’s company, you dial them up, only to hear that they are not the “right person” for you to speak with about the topic.

Instead of giving up and hanging up, use this moment to create a referral and pick up some key business intelligence. Here are a few ideas for what you can say:

• Ask for a referral: Say to the person on the phone, “Can you refer me to the correct person to talk to?” Be sure to use the word “refer” so you can use this person’s name to navigate through
  gatekeepers and screeners. You can also ask, “What is his/her job title? Do you have a direct dial number? Can you transfer me to his/her line?”
• Get business intelligence: Even if the person on the phone is not the “right person,” they might have some good knowledge about how the company works and how they might need a solution like the one you offer. Ask them, “Do you know what system you are
  currently using to ________? Are you doing that function in house or do you outsource that?”

You don’t need to always have the decision maker on the line to get some of your important questions answered. Even the “wrong person” can help equip you with information that will be helpful when you finally get the “right person” on the phone.

Mr. “We do that In-house or We Outsource That.”
This response is very predictable because chances are, any company you call is already using a solution similar to what you offer, whether it’s on an in-house basis or by outsourcing the function to a service provider. If a decision maker says “we do that in-house” or “we outsource that,” they are simply trying to end the call. The challenge for you as a sales professional is to keep the conversation going.

Be ready with a quick “go-to” follow-up response, such as, “Oh, OK. Does your in-house team also handle the (OTHER ASPECT OF THE SOLUTION)?” Or say, “What are some challenges that you’re facing with your current solution/arrangement?” Keep the conversation moving and deflect this objection by having your next qualifier ready.

If you are shut down often by the “we already do that in-house/outsourced” objection, your chances of generating B2B sales leads are slim to none. The decision maker is stating the obvious. Of course they already do it in-house. Your job is to dig deeper and find out if their current arrangement is broken, too expensive, inefficient or frustrating to the prospect in some way. Identify the points of pain, and you will uncover a new level of sales leads.

Mr. “We Just Bought a New System”
This prospect is not in the market for what you sell, so you are not going to get a sale directly from this one. However, before you hang up, if you play your cards right there is a business intelligence bonanza awaiting you.

Ask this person:

• “What system did you buy?”
• “How are things going with the new system?”
• “Why did you decide to buy that particular system?”

Your goal here is not to sell the customer on a new system – they just bought one, and even if things are not going well, chances are they’re not going to invest in a whole new system so soon. However, you need to find out more about their motivations for buying the system.

Was it a low-cost “Band-Aid” solution? Are they just trying to patch up a temporary problem? If so, perhaps they’d be willing to hear from you again in another six months. But you need to ask these questions to find this out – you can’t just assume they’re not interested and will never be interested, and hang up the phone. Stay on the call a few minutes longer, and keep the conversation going.

On the flip side, if they bought an expensive solution from your competitor, it’s very important to find out if they are happy with the purchase. Often we find, as part of our lead generation calls, that unhappy decision makers have some degree of remorse for the purchases they made. Play therapist and show some empathy.

The purpose of all of this is to use this company’s experience as a “reverse testimonial” when you are going up against the competition for your next deal. If you can accumulate several of these reverse testimonials then you can offer to put your new potential client in touch with a list of clients who are unhappy with your competitor’s solution.

Even if they don’t pick up the phone and call them, a list of names and phone numbers of unhappy clients is a very powerful sales tool and may be just what you need to tip the deal your way.

Looking for appointment setting companies to help manage your sales leads? Talk to Strategic Sales & Marketing for comprehensive lead management services to help you through the B2B lead generation process. Our industry-leading B2B sales consultants and appointment setters know how to cultivate, qualify and close on complex B2B sales leads in a variety of industries. We can help you find more sales leads, better qualify your sales leads, conduct more efficient appointment setting, and improve conversion rates to overcome your B2B lead generation challenges and turn B2B sales leads into bigger sales results.

When developing your lead generation processes, you may need more than fresh cold calling techniques or a mailing list of prospects; you need insights into “how” and “why” the sales process works like it does, and fresh ideas for how to make it better.

When you’re dealing with lead generation for B2B sales leads, you need to keep in mind that the sales cycle can be a long process with the possibility of ups and downs along the way, even during the early stages of initial processes and qualifying B2B sales leads.

The appointment setting process often leads to frustration when prospects don’t show up. Sales people know to expect a certain number of “no shows” and cancellations, but if your no show rate is higher than average, perhaps you should consider the reasons why.

Here are a few insights into why prospects fail to appear for your new business appointments.

“We have reviewed your website and we have no need for your services.” If you have advanced to this point in your lead generation process, chances are you are “surprised” to hear this response. Your first conversation with this prospect most likely uncovered some pain issues that you can help solve. In this scenario the above response is often “code” for “I haven’t been to your website yet and haven’t even reviewed the information you e-mailed to me a few days ago.” Your prospect may have an interest in your services but they haven’t done their homework. Chances are they are behind on many other deadlines and their excuse is just like having to explain to your 6^th grade teacher why you haven’t done your homework. Instead it’s easier to blow off the appointment.

How to handle: Stay patient. Keep in mind that the pain issues that you picked up in your first conversations are still accurate. Your solutions to these issues are also still valid. It’s time to move on to a new level of contact with the company. For example, if you have previously been talking with a director level decision maker, begin targeting a new contact at the VP level.

“My boss called me in to a meeting. Sorry I was unavailable.” Actually your contact was not in the boss’s office…he or she was frantically preparing a sales report that needed to be submitted to senior management several days ago. The report shows sales are flat for the month. Panic! Finally the VP (your contact’s boss) sent an e-mail that he needs the report by 10 a.m. Your appointment was at 9 a.m.

How to handle: Stay calm. Don’t jump to the conclusion that the prospect’s behavior is an indication that they are not interested. Instead, give the prospect some space and try to reschedule. This prospect might still have a strong interest (and a strong sense of “pain” showing them that they need your product). Let the prospect save face – give them a chance to choose the next appointment date.

“I talked with my boss about your services and we have no interest at this time.” Well, that might sound believable but you haven’t even discussed your solution with this person. This is the famous “good guy/bad guy” excuse. The prospect is saying, “I can’t take the blame for the fact that my boss doesn’t share my enthusiasm for your services. He’s the bad guy…and I did you a favor by taking your services to him and you should be very thankful for that.”

How to handle: Shore up your relationship with the immediate prospect, regardless of what your contact says the the boss thinks. Play along and empathize with how frustrating that must be for your contact. Even if the prospect mentioned your solution to their boss, you know your solutions were not discussed in detail. After all that was what you were going to do on your appointment. Don’t forget, you haven’t had a chance to present your capabilities in any detail yet. In a very low-key manner, discuss this with your contact and re-invite the prospect to spend 15 – 20 minutes to look at your solution.

“This is not something we are going to do this year….touch base with us next budget cycle.” This is code for: “If we had your solution in place, I would probably have the time to listen to what you have to say. In the meantime I am treading water and I don’t want to ask my boss for anything new as I already can’t get done with everything I need to do.”

How to handle: This is a classic appointment shutdown. Regroup and follow the procedures in section 1 above.  You need to find a level of contact within the company that is willing to get on the solutions side of the company’s problems. It’s important to identify these types of decision makers who know their existing systems are dysfunctional, even though they have no time to invest in solutions. Move on to a higher level of contact.

No call…no return call…no apology. This might sound like bad news, but sometimes “no news is good news.” The “silent no-shows” are often the easiest appointments to reschedule. The reason is that you haven’t heard the prospect say they were “not interested.”

How to handle: The key to getting this appointment rescheduled is to get the prospect on the phone live. When rescheduling these appointments don’t leave messages or send e-mails. Instead, simply dial on the lead until you get the prospect live and proceed with the assumption that the prospect is willing to reschedule.

How many of these “no show excuses” sound familiar to you? And how can you adjust your activities accordingly? Instead of spending time and money trying to generate more business leads, perhaps you could take a closer look at how you manage your “no shows” from existing sales leads. By following up, listening to the subtext of what your prospects are saying to you, and staying focused on finding the right decision makers to speak with at the prospect’s organization, there are many ways to turn “no shows” into sales.

Are you looking for lead generation companies who will go beyond the “same old” to help your sales improve? Talk to Strategic Sales & Marketing and see how we can help you with your B2B lead generation process. Strategic Sales & Marketing is a “leading light” among lead generation companies, with an industry-leading team of B2B sales consultants and appointment setters offering comprehensive lead generation services. We work with our clients to help them find solutions for their B2B lead generation challenges, helping them achieve more efficient appointment setting, better qualified B2B sales leads and bigger sales results. Contact Strategic Sales & Marketing for a free quick quote or a free, no obligation Test Drive of our lead generation services.